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The Requirements:
1.
Title page
2.
Table of contents
3.
One page of summary/ abstract
Part I – Introduction
4.
Description of the motivation of the research, that is, why you would be interested in such a subject
5.
Description of the hypothesis, that is, the research questions
Part II – Methods
6.
Identification of the population(s) of interest, for example, groups of employees, types of products or types of firms
Note – your project does not necessarily have to comprise business-related topics. You may very well choose to conduct your research on virtually any area of interest provided of course that you can draw a good hypothesis and find a good sample number!!!!!!!!!
7.
Identification of the element. For example, the unit of analysis – employee, student, firm, etc.
8.
Identification of the variables of interest. (independent and dependent variables).
9.
Description of the sampling plan (the list from which the sample will be drawn) = the simple random sample, systematic; survey type – observation, personal interview, archive data; sample size – should be large enough for statistical inference) and instrument design – question and coding of responses
10.
Description of the statistical procedures. Eg:- paired difference test, multiple regression
Part III – Results
11.
Description of the sample results. For example, descriptive statistics, with appropriate software output
12.
Description of the statistical inference, that is, the estimation or hypothesis testing, with appropriate Datadesk or Excel output
Part IV – Conclusions
13.
Description of the decision/ conclusion. For example, explain how/ why your result improves the practice of management or improves your understanding of some phenomenon of interest to the profession.
14.
Description of the limitations, weaknesses or concerns you have had with your research methodologies and data collected
Part V – References
15.
References (if any) ( ATTACHED EXAMPLE)
16.
Printout of data collected from software
Pr
pr
STATS
project
MA
1
0
2
0 – PROJECT
A study of the impact of parental relationships on the children’s love
relationships and outlook on marriage
1
TA B L E OF C ON TE N T S
SUMMARY/ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
Part I – INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
PART II – METHODS …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
OUR POPULATION ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4
OUR VARIABLES ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
SAMPLE AND STATISTICAL PROCEDURES ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 5
PART III –RESULTS………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6
OUR SAMPLE RESULTS – Descriptive Statistics …………………………………………………………………………………………. 6
Age ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
GENDER …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Parents’ Status ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
STUDENTS INVOLVED in a relationship …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
Duration of relationships in general ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
number of relationships …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
Types of relationships ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
Desire to marry in the future ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Adjectives associated with marriage …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 11
ASSOCIATIONS ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 12
THE ASSOCIATIONS WITH GENDER …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
THE ASSOCIATIONS WITH PARENTAL STATUS ………………………………………………………………………………… 13
ADDITIONAL ASSOCIATIONS FOR CHILDREN OF DIVORCED PARENTS ……………………………………… 19
Additional ASSOCIATIONS FOR CHILDREN WITH MARRIED PARENTS……………………………………….. 21
INFERENCES TO THE POPULATION …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 22
SINGLE VARIABLES ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 22
ASSOCIATIONS ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 23
CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 25
2
S U MMA R Y /A B S T R A C T
The following project aims to find the impact that parents’ marital status may have on their
children’s love relationships and opinion about marriage. As a result, the project intended
to find if children, whose parents got divorced, have the same or a different perception of
marriage and relationships, compared to children, whose parents are still together. We
collected randomly data from a population of students and had a sample of 81 students. The
students filled out an online questionnaire. The parents’ marital status had less impact that
what we expected. With an alpha 10%, the type of relationship sought by the children
(pvalue=0.0826) was found to be significantly associated with the parents’ relationship status.
Also, with an alpha of 5% both the capacity to trust partners (pvalue=0.0277) and the desire to
marry in the future (pvalue=0.0298) were found to have a significant association with the parents’
relationship status. The other variables were found to be independent of the parents’ marital
status.
3
PA R T I – I N TR O D U C TI ON
For our project, we decided to research on a subject directly related to our experience. As
young adults, we are in the process of forming opinions about marriage, expectations about how
our partners usually react and while some are ready to engage in long lasting relationships, others
seem to prefer short-lived relations. With friends, we always talk about our romantic adventures
and our hopes and we sometimes realize how drastically different our expectations or our
experiences may be from theirs.
However, as we are trying to achieve independence and to find our personal values and
goals for our love relationships and the rest of our lives, reading the works of psychologists
makes us realize how much early experience is crucial in forming what we will dare to dream and
believe. Then, we thought: “Could some of our expectations with our partners come from what
we saw from our parents’ love relationship as children? Wouldn’t it be nice to k
no
w how much
early experience is shaping our opinion on marriage and on romantic relationships in general?”
Of course, a lot of other factors will play out to create one’s high distrust or trust of marriage and
one’s general outlook on love, but we felt the influence of parental love relationship was a
possible factor of particular interest to us.
As a result, we decided to test if there was a link between the actual and perceived
stability of parental love relationships and the opinions about marriage and trends in love
relationships of the children. We hypothesized that the existence of stable parental relationships
will be correlated with a positive and favorable outlook on marriage on the part of the children.
On the contrary, a divorce between the parents will be correlated to a
negative
outlook on
marriage on the part of the children. Our third hypothesis was that gender will not impact the
children’s outlook toward marriage and their relationships.
4
PA R T I I – ME TH O DS
OUR POPULATION
Our population of interest is the students between 15 and 30 years old who are currently studying
in France. We are equally interested in French and international students. The unit of analysis
will be the students.
OUR VARIABLES
The variables we will investigate can be separated into independent and dependent variables. The
independent variables we will assess are:
Age
Gender
Parental status (divorce, married, together but not married, etc.)
Ratings of the parents’ relationships stability (together or with their new partner as
applicable)
Siblings relationship status
The dependent variables we will assess are, students’:
Existence of current relationship and its duration
Number of previous love relationships
Duration of love relationships in general
Type of relationship preferred and trust toward partners
Opinion about marriage
Moreover we are also tried to take into account different factors depending on whether the
parents are separate or still together. For example, for divorced parents, we have tried to assess
variables such as if the parents are now on friendly term. For parents who are still together, we
have asked if their relationship is stable. Those variables might explain part of the variation in the
data; it will be interesting to see if they really seem to explain some of the variance in our results.
5
SAMPLE AND STATISTICAL PROCEDURES
Our sample is taken randomly from our acquaintances (simple random sampling). We have put
the questionnaires on Facebook and sent it to our friends and we have told them to send the
questionnaires to their own circle of acquaintances. As a result, the sample is made of
international students (mainly from AUP) and of French students both from AUP and from
French universities in Paris. Because of our sampling method, the sample is likely to be
representative of students coming from the middle and higher middle classes.
The data has been collected through two identical self-report questionnaires (one in French and
one in English) to be filled online. 61 people answered our French questionnaire and 20 people
answered our English questionnaire making our sample to be of 81 students in total. The
questionnaire in French can be found at
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dHEzbVpOQVRqQk
NEN2hxdllMZG1SX2c6MQ
. The adjectives associated with marriage were classified into 3 categories: positive, negative and
neutral.
We used the t-test in datadesk to estimate the intervals for µ with a 95% confidency
intervals for quantitative single variables, π was also estimated for some categorical
variables; we used chi^2 tests and pooled t tests to test bivariate associations’ significance
in the population.
6
PA R T I I I – R E S U L TS
OUR S AMPLE RESULTS – DESCR IP TIVE S TATIS TI CS
AGE
Here, we decided to focus on the age of our sample in order to have a better understanding of the
answers.
In this sample, we have quantitative data, with n=81 and range going from 15 to 30 years old.
The histogram above shows that the distribution of the sample is unimodal with Mo= 22 and pretty
symmetrical. The mean (Xbar=21.79) and the median (M=22) are almost similar, which confirms
the theory that the data are symmetrical. 50% of the data are between 20 and 23 years old.
From the box plot below, we can see that there are two outliers, 29 and 30 years old.
7
GENDER
Gender Frequency %
F 48
59%
M 33
41%
n=81 100%
PARENTS’ STATUS
Status Frequency %
Divorced
21 26
Married
60 74
n=81
59%
41%
Gender
F
M
0
20
40
60
F M
Gender
26%
74%
Divorced
Married
In our sample, we had the chance to have a
quite similar proportion of males (41%)
and females (59%)
8
74% of the individuals gathered in our project have their parents still married.
STUDENTS INVOLVED IN A RELATIONSHIP
Involved in a
relationship
Count %
no 51 62.963
yes 30 37.037
DURATION OF RELATIONSHIPS IN GENERAL
63%
37%
Involved in a
relationship
no
yes
37% of the students are involved in a
relationship, while 63% are single
9
We realized that most of the students (26%) were involved in relationships that lasted more than
one year, while only 21% were usually involved in relationships lasting between 0 and 1 month.
NUMBER OF RELATIONSHIPS
Summary of # of relationships
Count 81
Mean 3.2963
Median 3
MidRange 15
MidQRang 2.5
Variance 14.4361
StdDev 3.79949
Min 0
Max 30
Range 30
Lower ith %tile 1
Upper ith %tile 4
21%
18%
14%
21%
26%
General length of relationships
0-1 months 1-3 months
3-6 months
6 months -1 year a year or more
In this sample;
We notice that data varies between 0 to 30
relationships. It is unimodal (mode is 3
relationships) skewed to the right with 3
outliers. Half of students have had between 1
and 4 previous relationships and one forth has
more than 4.
The average of relationships is 3.2 with average
dispersion around it of 3.79.
According to the box plot, we have three
outliers: 8, 12 and 30 relationships
10
TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS
69% of the students are looking for serious relationships while 31% prefer flirts.
DESIRE TO MARRY IN THE FUTURE
31%
69%
Types of
relationships
for fun
serious
Total Cases 81
Kind of relationship Count %
for fun 25 30.864
serious 56 69.136
58% of the students want to get married in the future, while only 12% are against the
idea and 30% do not know
11
ADJECTIVES ASSOCIATED WITH MARRIAGE
Adjective
associated
Count
%
negative 17 20.988
neutral 11
13.58
positive 53 65.432
n=81
12%
30%
58%
Getting married in
the future
I am against
the
idea
maybe
yes
0
20
40
60
I am
against the
idea
maybe yes
Getting married in the
future
Count
0
20
40
60
negative neutral
positive
Adjectives associated
with marriage
21%
14%
65%
Adjectives associated
with marriage
negative
neutral
positive
We can see that 65% of the students associate marriage with a positive adjective, while
21% describe marriage with negative adjective. 14% of the adjectives were neutral.
12
ASSOCIATIONS
THE ASSOCIATIONS WITH GENDER
The desire to marry in the future, the kind of words associated with marriage and the kind
of relationships sought were found to be independent of gender.
In fact, the association between gender and the desire to marry in the future is
almost null with a Cramer number of 0.082. On the bar chart the proportionalities are
similar and the expected and observed counts are very similar.
Also, the association in this sample between gender and the kind of adjective
attached to marriage is almost null with a Cramer number of 0.047.
We notice this: On the bar charts, the proportionalities are similar. The expected and
observed counts are also very similar.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
F M
Desire to marry and gender
yes
maybe
I am against the
idea
13
Finally, the association between gender and kind of relationships sought is
almost null with a Cramer number of 0.044. On the bar charts, the proportionalities are
similar. The expected and observed counts are also very similar.
THE ASSOCIATIONS WITH PARENTAL STATUS
Expected age for marriage, adjective describing marriage and talking about marriage
with a previous partner were found to be quite independent of parental status. Number of
previous relationships, the type of relationship sought, trust toward partners, desire to
marry in the future and the role in initiating of talks about marriage were found to have
some association with parental status.
The parental status seems to be a bit correlated to the number of previous
relationships. The average number of relationships for children of divorced parents is of
approximately 2.72 while the average number of relationship for children of married
parents is of approximately 3.508. The variances are homogeneous (17.49<6.207*5).
0%
50%
100%
F M
Gender and kind of
relationship
serious
for fun
0%
50%
100%
F M
Gender and kind of adjectives
positive
neutral
negative
14
The parental status has a low association (Cramer number of 0,223) with the general
length of the children’s relationship. The proportionalities in the bar chart is a bit different
and the expected and observed counts are also a bit different. There is some association
between the two variables.
0
50
F
re
q
u
e
n
cy
Number of relationships
Married
0
10
20
0 3 6 9 MoreF
re
q
u
e
n
cy
Number of relationships
Divorced
15
There is no association between the parental status and the time spent in the current
relationship (here, n=31). The mean and median are very similar for samples of students
with divorced and married parents. The variances are homogeneous.
0
20
40
60
80
divorced married
General lengths of
relationships versus
parental status
a year or
more
6 months –
1
year
3-6 months
1-3 months
0
2
4
6
0.75 2.166666667 3.583333333 ou plus…
F
ré
q
u
e
n
ce
Length of actual relationship in years
Divorced
0
5
10
15
0.1667 2.375025 4.58335 6.791675 ou plus…
F
ré
q
u
e
n
ce
Length of actual relationship in years
Married
16
The parental status has a low association (ф=0,1929) with the type of relationships
sought by the children. Moreover, the bar chart shows children with married parents are
more likely to look for serious relationships. The expected and observed counts are quite
different. It suggests there is an
association.
The parental status has a low association (ф=0,2446 <0.3) with the trust of the
children toward their partners. Moreover, children with married parents tend to trust more
their partners. The expected and observed counts are quite different. It suggests there is an
association.
0
20
40
60
80
divorced married
Type of relationship sought
depending on parental statuses
serious
for fun
0
20
40
60
80
divorced married
Trust toward the partner versus
parental status
yes
no
17
The parental status has a medium association with the children’s desire to marry in
the future with a Cramer number of approximately 0.3. The children with married parents
are more in favor of becoming married in proportion to the children of divorced parents.
The proportionalities on the bar chart are quite different. Expected and observed counts are
also quite different.
Interestingly, parental status and the expected age for marriage have only a low
association (Cramer of 0.13) and the proportionalities of the bar chart and expected and
observed counts are quite similar. Those two variables seem to be less associated than the
previous ones of this section.
The parental status and the kind of adjectives chosen by the children to describe
marriage are independent. The Cramer number is of 0.06. The proportionalities in the bar
chart and the expected and observed counts are quite similar.
0
20
40
60
80
divorced married
desire to marry versus parental
status
yes
maybe
I am against
the idea
0
20
40
60
80
divorced married
Expected age of marriage versus
parental status
35-40
30-35
25-
30
20-25
18
The parental status and the fact children have already talked about marriage with
one of their partners are independent. In fact, the ф number is of 0.03. The proportionalities
in the bar chart and the expected and observed counts are quite similar.
Last but not least, the students having already talked about marriage with one of
their partners (n=21) were selected and the association between parental status and who
initiated the discussion was investigated. These two variables were found to have a medium
association (Cramer number of 0.408). The bar chart shows that children of married
parents tended to initiate more the discussion about marriage than children of divorced
parents. The expected and observed numbers are quite different.
0
20
40
60
80
divorced married
Kind of adjective to describe marriage
and parental status
positive
neutral
negative
0
20
40
60
80
divorced married
Discussion about divorce with
partner versus parental status
yes
no
0
10
20
30
divorced married
Initiating the discussion about
marriage and parental status
our initiative
my initiative
19
Then we tried to investigate how other factors related to the parental situation
(divorced or married) could explain the different outcomes in the dependent variables of
the children. Expected age for marriage, adjective describing marriage and talking about
marriage with a previous partner were found not to be associated with parental status so
we didn’t keep them in our analysis of associations with those additional factors.
To see the impact of those additional factors, we decided to see their influence on the desire
to marry in the future and the capacity of children to trust in their partners.
ADDITIONAL ASSOCIATIONS FOR CHILDREN OF DIVORCED PARENTS
For children of divorced parents, we hypothesized that if the parents were now on
friendly terms, it would account for children being more inclined to marry and having more
trust in their partners.
CURRENT SITUATION BETWEEN PARENTS (FRIENDLY/NOT FRIENDLY)
The parents being on friendly terms has only a low association with the children’s
trust in their partner (association: Cramer number of 0.168) and their desire to marry
(association: Cramer number of 0.236).
For these two variables, the bar charts show that the proportionalities are a bit different
and that the expected and observed counts are a bit different.
no yes
yes 4 5
no 8 5
0
5
10
15
Trust toward partners versus
parents on friendly terms
yes
no
20
STABILITY OF PARENTS ’ CURRENT RELATIONSHIP
The stability of the parents’ current relationship seems to have some association
with the children’s trust in their partner and their desire to marry.
For these two variables, the bar charts show that the proportionalities are quite different
and that the expected and observed counts are quite different.
0
5
10
15
no yes
Desire to marry versus parents on
friendly terms
yes
maybe
I am against the
idea
0
5
10
15
no yes
Stability of parents’ new relationship
versus children’s trust in partner
N/A
5
4
3
2
1
21
ADDITIONAL ASSOCIATIONS FOR CHILDREN WITH MARRIED PARENTS
For children with married parents, we hypothesized that the stability of the parent’s
relationship as it is perceived by the children will be significantly associated with the
children’s trust in their partners and the children’s desire to marry in the future.
STABILITY OF PARENTAL RELATIONSHIP
The stability of the parent’s relationship was found to be associated with both the
children’s trust in their partners and the children’s desire to marry in the future.
For these two variables, the bar charts show that the proportionalities are quite different
and that the expected and observed counts are quite different.
0
2
4
6
8
10
I am against
the idea
maybe yes
Stability of parent’s desire to marry
versus children’s desire to marry
N/A
5
4
3
2
22
INFEREN CES TO THE PO PULATION
SINGLE VARIABLES
0
10
20
30
40
no yes
Stability of parents’ relationship versus
trust in partner
5
4
3
1
0
10
20
30
40
I am against
the idea
maybe yes
Stability of parents’ relationship versus
desire to marry
5
4
3
1
23
The average age of our population is between 21.26 and 22.23 years old with a 95% confidency
interval.
We estimated for the population the percentage of males with a 95% confidency interval:
P=0.41
1-p= 1-0.41=0.59
The counts of successes and the counts of failures were both superior to 5.
SE=√
( )
z=1.96
The % of males in the population belongs to (0.302;0.517) with a 95% confidency interval.
We followed the same steps to estimate the % of students with married parents in the population
and the % of students who were interested by having serious relationships. The % of students with
married parents in the population belongs to (0.644;0.836) with the 95% confidency interval. The
% of students interested in having serious relationships in the population belongs to (0.589;0.791)
with a 95% confidency interval.
The average number of previous relationship in the population was estimated to be between 2.456
and 4.136 with a 95% confidency interval.
ASSOCIATIONS
It was investigated if the variables of gender and the desire to marry were predicted to be
independent when an inference was made to the population.
Ho: Gender and desire to marry are two independent variables
H1: Gender and the desire to marry are significantly associated
Expected counts were found to be superior or equal to 1. The pvalue was found through datadesk.
Pvalue = 0.7595
Therefore, the Ho hypothesis cannot be rejected. Gender and the desire to marry have no
significant association in the population.
The same thing was done for all the pairs of two categorical variables. It was found that the
desire to marry, the kinds of adjective used to describe marriage (pvalue=0.9136) and the
24
kind of relationship preferred by the children (pvalue= 0.69) had no significant association with
gender.
The kinds of adjective used to describe marriage (pvalue=0.8634), talking about marriage
with a previous partner (pvalue=0.7507) and the general length of relationships (pvalue=0.4015)
were found to be independent of parental status. With an alpha 10%, the type of relationship
sought by the children (pvalue=0.0826) was found to be significantly associated with the parents’
relationship status. Also, with an alpha of 5% both the capacity to trust partners
(pvalue=0.0277) and the desire to marry in the future (pvalue=0.0298) were found to have a
significant association with the parents’ relationship status.
For children of divorced parents, the capacity to trust partners (pvalue=0.4285) and the
desire to marry (pvalue=0.5420) were not significantly associated by the facts parents were now
on friendly terms or not.
The significance of associations in the population could not be assessed for some pairs of
categorical variables because they had expected counts smaller than 1. These pairs of variables
are: Parental status versus expected age of marriage, parental status versus initiation of the
discussion about marriage, and stability of parents’ relationship versus trust in partner and
stability of parental relationship versus desire to marry for both divorced and married parents.
Do the parental status and the students’ number of previous relationships have a
significant association?
We notice that:17.4956 /6.20779 < 5 As a result the variances are homogeneous. So we perform
the pooled t test.
Individual Alpha Level 0.05
Ho: µ1-µ2 = 0 Ha: µ1-µ2 < 0
25
Test Ho: µ(divorced:Number of previous relationships)-µ(married:Number of previous
relationships) = 0 vs Ha: µ(divorced:Number of previous relationships)-µ(married:Number of
previous relationships) < 0
Difference Between Means = -0.78120185 t-Statistic = -0.8214 w/79 df
Fail to reject Ho at Alpha = 0.05
p = 0.2069
The difference between the means is not significant. Parental status and the students’
number of previous relationships are not significantly associated with 95% confidency.
Do the parental status and the students’ time spent in their current relationship have a
significant association?
Since variances are homogeneous (5.932< 5*2.204)
we can do a pooled t test on datadesk.
Individual Alpha Level 0.05
Ho: µ1-µ2 = 0 Ha: µ1-µ2 < 0
Test Ho: µ(divorced:time current relationship in years)-µ(married:time current relationship in
years) = 0 vs Ha: µ(divorced:time current relationship in years)-µ(married:time current
relationship in years) < 0
Difference Between Means = -0.31746508 t-Statistic = -0.3612 w/28 df
Fail to reject Ho at Alpha = 0.05
p = 0.3603
The difference between the means is not significant. Parental status and the duration of the
current relationships of the students are independent.
C ON C L U S I ON
26
To conclude, we were able to see that the parent’s relationship status is significantly
associated with the type of relationships sought by the children, their capacity to trust
partners and their desire to get married in the future. The other variables were found to
have no significant associations. As a result, the significant associations found suggested
that children whose parents got divorced seemed to have a slightly more negative vision of
the couple and marriage while the others tend to be more positive about it. The project
allowed us to observe an actual phenomena which might help explain in part the reactions
of young adults toward marriage and love relationships. Also, the fact that several variables
had no significant associations with the parents being married or divorced was a surprise to
us and it suggested that young adults can really move out of their parents’ steps.
The problems we encountered were the fact that our sample contained much more
children with parents who are still married than children with divorced parents that we
might expect in the general population. It might be because our sample is likely to be made
up of a quite high number of students coming from a high social class. As such, we felt that
our sample might not be a completely representative sample for the population of students
in Paris who are between 18 and 30 years old. In addition, some of the students of our
sample were foreigners and according to the country, the idea of marriage may differ and
disturb the results.
